


It's ok, Bruce

by flaminpumpkin



Series: Batlantern Week [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Green Lantern - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, First Kiss, M/M, Sacrifice, i guess, it's up to the reader's interpretation, mention of character being drugged, past hal/sinestro briefly implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:35:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29919054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flaminpumpkin/pseuds/flaminpumpkin
Summary: The air was dry. Cold. Freezing even. Just like the surface he was lying on.Strange.He reached for the covers to wrap himself in it but… He couldn’t find them.Where was he?
Relationships: Hal Jordan/Bruce Wayne
Series: Batlantern Week [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2199015
Comments: 9
Kudos: 36
Collections: Batlantern Week





	It's ok, Bruce

**Author's Note:**

> Here's my second entry for Batlantern Week! Prompt chosen: Sacrifice.
> 
> Small disclaimer : The choppy rhythm of the fic is completely intended, I wanted it to reflect the haziness of Bruce's mind
> 
> Also, I checked my tags like 500 times this time around, so everything is good! I was so mortified this morning because 2 people reached out to ask me why my previous fic was tagged with superbat when there's absolutely no mention of it... I was actually trying to tag "Bruce and his kids" and SOMEHOW it ended up with the superbat tag? It never happened before so I'm still confused as to how it happened but mostly I feel bad for misleading people even though it's just because I didn't think about checking the relationship tags before posting it ^^'
> 
> I apologize in advance for any horrendous grammatical/spelling mistakes, english is not my native language
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

The air was dry. Cold. Freezing even. Just like the surface he was lying on.

Strange.

He reached for the covers to wrap himself in it but… He couldn’t find them.

Where was he?

He remembered the fundraiser. The speech. Talking to several people he couldn’t quite put a face on.

He remembered watching Tim and Cass dance, his son obviously trying not to look like a klutz compared to his sister, and then… Then he had excused himself and went for one of the more private balconies of the building where the fundraiser took place.

(Where had it been? The name escaped him for some reason.)

He remembered staying there a while.

Everything was dark after that. Just the memory of a bright flash of light, cold despite its warm color. And then nothing.

Until now.

Bruce groaned. His head was hurting, blood pounding in his ears. There was something incredibly wrong about the pain. It didn’t feel like a hungover.

He straightened up to a sitting position and opened his eyes only to close them again immediately when they were assaulted by harsh white light. He wasn’t at the manor. Nor at the penthouse.

Where was he?

He raised a hand to his face in an attempt to protect his sensitive eyes and tried again.

He wasn’t home. He wasn’t even sure he was still on Earth at this point if the quick assessment he’d just made was right. From the look of it, he seemed to be in a cell. On a spaceship.

He stood up, suddenly awake. The room – cell – turned and lurched to the left and he had to lean on the wall to regain some sort of balance. Not really a wall actually. It was the only surface of the cell that wasn’t this cold, strange metal but something that looked like glass instead. Although, he doubted he could break it as easily.

He took a couple of steadying breaths and looked around, through the glass-like material.

The cell he was in was one out of four, placed in circle around one circular computer. There was someone standing there, surveilling the screens.

An alien. Their body was tall and thin, too thin; their arms long, almost the length of their body; their head looked like a human skull if you stripped it of every type of skin and muscle with two, shiny black round eyes.

But the rather nightmarish appearance of the alien in front of Bruce wasn’t what kept his attention, wasn’t what made his eyes widen. It was the uniform they were wearing.

“No…”

A whooshing sound made itself heard behind Bruce and he spun on his heels to see a door open in the wall opposite to him.

“Hiya, Spooky.”

Jordan stood there, flanked by two other aliens the same uniform as the one on the other side of the glass behind Bruce. The golden yellow made his stomach churn.

His lips tightened, his jaw clenched. He watched attentively as Jordan stepped inside his cell with deliberate carelessness, hands shoved in the pockets of his bomber jacket-

The Green Lantern uniform wasn’t there. He didn’t have his ring. Which was probably why he was hiding his hands in his pockets.

Bruce cursed his slow mind. He had most probably been drugged.

“What happened?” he snapped at the other man, voice raspy with disuse.

He shouldn’t have. They were in the same situation, here.

“Glad to see you, too,” the pilot drawled, head tilted to the side.

“Jordan.”

Jordan smiled. Something weak, rueful, letting go of the act. He sighed.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

Also he had a pretty well formed idea as to what exactly was happening, he still felt the need to ask. Somehow hoping it wasn’t what it seemed, deep down.

“I think you know, Spooks.”

“Sinestro?”

Jordan nodded and took the few steps separating them to stand beside him by the glass wall. There was something awfully wrong with the way he acted but Bruce couldn’t pinpoint what exactly, his mind still hazy.

The pilot glared through the glass at the alien in the other room, his eyes hard and cold like Bruce had never seen them. They were always pools of honey to the Bat. Warm, inviting, shining with mirth or glowing with determination. But now they were radiating a kind of rage that would freeze the most hardened men to the marrow of their bones. The alien must have felt the same because they left the room briskly without looking back, leaving Hal and Bruce to themselves inside the small cell.

Bruce watched the scene unroll, almost bemused by this side of Jordan.

When the other man turned to him again, his eyes changed instantly, softened into a gentle gaze as they roamed over Bruce’s face, stopping somewhere on his forehead. His face hardened again slightly as he raised a hand to graze his fingertips lightly against a sore spot right above his temple. Bruce observed him closely, trying to decipher what exactly was happening with the pilot. To no avail.

The hand fell back beside Jordan’s body and he sighed again, his shoulders hunching forward, making him look smaller than he actually was.

When he met Bruce’s stare again, he looked resigned.

“Thaal probably thought it was a wonderful idea to kidnap you. It was actually, in retrospect. But it’s alright. You’ll be fine.”

Bruce let out an incredulous huff at that and leaned forward, invading Jordan’s space, their noses almost touching.

“Fine? Jordan, your ring is gone. We’re prisoner on a spaceship god knows where-”

“None of us are prisoners, Bruce. I made a deal.”

The silence following was deafening.

“What?”

“I made a deal.”

“I heard you the first time. I was simply hoping that for _once in your life_ you hadn’t done something completely idiotic,” he hissed between gritted teeth, guilt wrapping insidiously around his heart as he watched the pilot flinch at his words and take a step back, away from him and his seething anger.

Then Jordan’s words registered.

 _None of us are prisoners_.

He had said that and Bruce couldn’t detect any lie in those few words. So why were they locked in a cell? Why was Jordan without his ring while surrounded by Yellow Lanterns? Why did this unstoppable force of nature powered by pure will that was Hal Jordan looked so defeated? Why, why, why?

No possible answer came to mind and he wanted to lash out, anxiety rising as his brain kept stuttering and stalling as he desperately tried to think and failed.

“What’s the deal?” he asked quietly, anger seeping out of him as quickly as it had come, replaced by something else, something visceral that made his insides coil and tense.

Worry.

“I stay. They let you go. Simple as that.”

It wasn’t that simple. It was never that simple. Bruce knew that better than anyone else.

“You said none of us were prisoners,” he prodded further, once again stepping into the other man’s space, eyes shifting between Jordan’s. “So what will they do to you? What does Sinestro want?”

Jordan shrugged.

“What he always wanted, I guess.”

And somehow, Bruce felt like these words were charged with a lot more than what they implied at first. Like Jordan joining his corp wasn’t the only reason Sinestro wanted him. There was something between the two, something the pilot had never mentioned to anyone. Something Bruce had suspected for quite some time.

It made him shiver. He didn’t want to ask, to know. To confirm what had been a blurry space in his file on Jordan.

But there was something he wanted to know, something else. Something that pushed and prodded at his mind.

“Why me? Why did Sinestro come for me?”

“Because he knows, I guess.”

The other man wasn’t looking at him. He was avoiding answering his questions clearly and explicitly, nearly making him growl in frustration. Jordan couldn’t hold informations to himself. Not now.

“He knows what, Jordan.”

“What to look for,” he whispered as he met his eyes again, lifting his hand to Bruce’s face one more time, cupping his jaw gently this time.

No. No. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t how Bruce had wanted things to go. And yet, he couldn’t help but want to lean into the touch, to turn his head and brush his lips against the pad of the thumb that was stroking his cheek tenderly, like he was something fragile.

“I love you, Bruce. And I did what I did because I can’t… I can’t let you die because of this, because of me. I can’t let your kids live without their father because I was a liability.”

“Jordan-”

The pilot shook his head with a laugh. Something weak and ugly that made Bruce’s heart clench painfully in his chest.

“God, you probably hate me right now,” he said with a woeful smile. “I mean you kind of already did, so what’s a bit more? It’s not like it matters now…”

Before he knew it, Bruce had grabbed the other man’s wrist and was squeezing in a way he hoped was reassuring. He kept Jordan’s hand there, against his face, warming up his skin, giving him an anchor in a situation where he could feel himself lose his footing, little by little.

“I never hated you.”

It was Jordan’s turn to huff, disbelieving. Like Bruce made a habit of saying things he didn’t mean.

“You don’t have to spare my feelings-”

“I’m not!”

Bruce was getting desperate. The drug they had injected him with was making his mind work in the wrong way. His emotions were all over the place, suffocating him. This was why he kept such a short leash on them. Because if he let himself be overwhelmed by them, he couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe properly. Anyone seeing him right now would doubt it was really him.

“I’m not. I never- I just- Fuck!”

“Bruce-”

Bruce fisted his hands in the lapels of Jordan’s jacket and pulled him down, smashing their mouths together. He poured everything he had into that one kiss, the two hands now cradling his hand only spurring him on. Everything he couldn’t say, had never let himself admit even to himself until recently, he let it out and exposed, all for Jordan to see, to feel.

They were both breathless when the pilot pulled away but Bruce felt like this wasn’t enough, like this one passionate kiss hadn’t been enough to translate all those feelings weighing on his heart so he opened his mouth and let the words flow freely for once, not caring for appearance.

They didn’t have that luxury. Not right now.

“No. You shut up and listen to me, you suicidal idiot,” he all but growled, pushing his forehead to rest against Jordan’s so his eyes couldn’t focus on anything but Bruce. “I never hated you. Never. You are infuriating and reckless. You provoke me any chance you get and fight me for the pettiest things. But I never hated you. Not for a single second.”

He kissed him again, short and sweet this time, and when he met Jordan’s gaze, he knew he understood. But he said it anyway. Because he _needed_ to say it.

“I love you, Hal Jordan. I love you, but I was always too much of a coward to do anything about it.”

“Well then, that makes two of us,” the other man murmured, letting his lips stretch into a small smile.

It reached his eyes this time.

Bruce took it in. He memorized everything he could about the other man because he knew it would be ripped away from him a lot sooner than expected. Then Jordan was the one kissing him again. Slowly, lovingly, desperate.

It felt like a farewell. It felt final.

Jordan pulled away completely, arms falling at his sides, and as if on cue, the cell’s door opened again, revealing the same two aliens as before. He stepped towards them, eyes never leaving Bruce, and let himself be manhandled out of the cell.

“It’s ok, Bruce,” was the last thing he heard Hal say before the door closed again and the cell was filled with a sickly purple smoke, the words still echoing in his head as he passed out on the cold hard floor.

* * *

The next time Bruce saw the pilot, after months of relentless search, Hal Jordan was no more. His body was intact, same as the last time he had seen him. But the mad, red glow of his eyes was anything but human.

Sinestro had played with fire and by the way his lifeless body was laying at the feet of the creature that used to be Hal Jordan, this fire had burned him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> Kudos and comments feed my soul so you are welcome to leave one or both ^^ I'm also on tumblr ( @flaminpumpkin ) and twitter ( @Dpressedpumpkin ) if you'd rather reach out there


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